Lee Foundation makes $600,000 gift to UB to support schizophrenia research

by jmaloni

Submitted

Wed, Nov 6th 2013 11:55 am

A gift of $600,000 from
the Patrick P. Lee Foundation is funding a University at Buffalo scientist's
promising research on the cause of schizophrenia. It is the foundation's
largest-ever grant to UB.

The devastating disease
affects some 2 million Americans.

Schizophrenia most often
strikes men and women from adolescence through adulthood, but its origin may
lie in genetic missteps years earlier, when those it afflicts are still in the
womb.

This is one implication
of new findings from the laboratory of Michal Stachowiak, Ph.D., in UB's department
of pathology and anatomical sciences in the School of Medicine and Biomedical
Sciences.

The Lee Foundation grant
will fund four-year fellowships for three Ph.D. or M.D.-Ph.D. trainees to study
and conduct research investigating the new approach to schizophrenia under the
direction of Stachowiak and his team.

"Dr. Stachowiak and his
team are focusing on revealing the causes and neurodevelopmental mechanisms of
schizophrenia. They are hoping to discover new possibilities for developing
schizophrenia treatments, even a way to affect the development of this
disease," said Patrick P. Lee, chairman of The Patrick P. Lee Foundation.

In addition to producing
the young researchers who will join the race to understand schizophrenia, the
fellowships help support Stachowiak's research efforts.

Stachowiak said their
findings of novel gene regulatory mechanisms suggest it might someday be
possible to arrest the progression of the disease before it fully develops.

"We believe that the
transgenic mouse developed in our laboratory offers a unique model that
explains schizophrenia from genes to brain structure and finally to
development," he said.

The Patrick P. Lee Foundation,
based in Amherst, was formed by Lee in 2005. He built International Motion
Control, a worldwide conglomerate with manufacturing facilities. It was
acquired by ITT in 2007.

Reacting to the grant,
UB's Stachowiak said, "We have dedicated our careers to better understanding
schizophrenia and we are very close to reaching a great milestone in how to
treat this disease. Never before have we been this excited about funding."